No Gay Concentration Camps in Chetnya

When Lenin came to power in 1917, he abolished the entire body of oppressive Czarist law and replaced it with a progressive Socialist system conducive to the well-being of the the ordinary people. The Czar – following virtually every European legal code – overtly ‘banned’ homosexuality, and had strict punishments for anyone caught practising it (like in Victorian England, this proscription applied only to men – as female homosexuality was not considered a ‘real’ phenomenon). By abolishing the Czarist legal code, Lenin became one of the first leaders in the world to ‘decriminalise’ homosexuality. This is a point often ignored by bourgeois gay movements that support capitalism and do not want to accredit Soviet Communism with any progressive achievements in the area of LGBTQ rights. This was a vital step forward for gay rights, and it was initiated by a Russian system applying the Scientific Socialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This was followed in 1926 with legislation protecting children from paedophilia, and any men (but not women) that sexually prayed upon children. In 1934, no anti-gay laws were passed in the USSR, but the 1926 legislation was confirmed (as a means to protect children). Bourgeois rhetoric on this matter often (deliberately) mistranslates the nuance of the original Russian language, and try to import an imagined ‘anti-gay’ agenda. This Cold War misrepresentation was further applied to modern Russia following the 1991 Western-inspired ‘collapse’ of the USSR – when Boris Yeltsin overtly ‘legalised’ homosexuality inaccordance with bourgeois law. However, as the Russian Orthodox Church was allowed to yet again interfere in State politics following 1991, this church’s anti-gay theology began to make its presence felt throughout Russia. Of course, the religiously friendly Western powers conveniently ‘ignore’ this fact, as to criticise the bigotry of the Christian church is thought to be a Marxist attitude (and against the interests of capitalism).

As the US and EU unleash a rightwing and racially motivated offensive against Russia, the latest ‘false flag’ attack involves allegations of ‘gay concentration camps’ in Chetnya. Interestingly, these stories originated in the rightwing (and anti-Muslim) Russian newspaper ‘Novaya Gazeta’ which was founded in 1990 by the traitor Mikhail Gorbachev as a means to directly attack the Soviet system along bourgeois, capitalist lines. This newspaper allowed the anti-Communist attitudes of the capitalist West to infiltrate every corner of Soviet life, and assisted in the collapse of Soviet social cohesion. Today, Novaya Gazeta represents the current attitude of the US and is therefore, pursuing an anti-Putin agenda. The ultimate aim of Novaya Gazeta is for Russia to lose its sovereignty and independence, and become a subservient part of the European Union. As the West is currently Islamophobic, Novaya Gazeta has launched an attack of Islamic Chetnya – using ‘false’ allegations of gay oppression in that small country. As usual, there are no independent Russian or Chetnyan language reports, and no substantiating evidence whatsoever. Chetnya is being picked upon because it is Islamic, whilst the Russian Orthodox Church – the real home of anti-gay attitudes – remains untouched. Novaya Gazeta is part-owned today by Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, who propagates his neo-liberal agenda (with his son Evgeny Lebedev) through the British newspaper the pair joint-own – The Independent and The London Evening Standard, This is how the false stories of anti-gay oppression has spread into the West through the British media. The Lebedev family are deceptively described as ‘liberals’, but this is a front for their rightwing, anti-Islamic, racist agenda, which is designed to ferment war between Russia and the West.